My mother-in-law is a history buff.
If I ever want the answer to any sort of Canadian/Scottish/Irish history question, she is the first person I would turn to.
Whenever I ask her why she likes history so much she would always say, “you have to know where you were to know where you are going”.
To me, this was just another one of those standard cliché’s that you hear all the time…like ‘you gotta spend money to make money’, or ‘no pain, no gain’.
Turns out when it comes to history – I was wrong, she was right..(of course once she reads this I will NEVER hear the end of it).
Just like in life, in order to move forward in science we need to know where we were in order to know where we are going. This is why science is in desperate need of a history lesson.
Science – especially weight loss science – needs to take a good hard a look at it’s history.
Science is constantly disregarding known scientific facts for newer and ‘sexier’ explanations.
In my opinion this is mostly the media’s fault but nevertheless, science is letting it happen.
Take this example…
I took some time over my vacation to really dig backwards through the scientific literature on weight loss. I made it my mission to find the research that isn’t available on-line – the kind of research that takes a lot of pleading and begging to get access from the kind librarian at the university.
My mission was accomplished when I walked out of the library with a collection of papers dating from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
After reviewing some very impressive work that I will be touching on in a new audio file, I came across some rather shocking research that was published in 1936.
Back in 1936 two researchers by the names of Best and Campbell suggested that a protein like substance secreted from the pituitary acts on the adipose tissue causing it to release stored fat.
While this doesn’t seem overly impressive, remember that growth hormone is a protein like substance that is synthesized, stored, and secreted by the anterior pituitary.
So more than 7o YEARS AGO we had a pretty good idea that growth hormone plays a very important role in fat burning.
Yet somewhere in those 70 years we disregarded the potent fat burning effect of GH and instead started examining things like leptin and grehlin for the answers to our fat burning questions.
So now 70 years later we are finally realizing (for the second time) that growth hormone may be the driving force behind fat loss.
Interestingly, the 3 main things that cause GH secretion are fasting, exercise and sleep.
Sound familiar?
By following the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle of flexible intermittent fasting, weight training and proper recovery we take advantage of GH’s ability to cause our body to burn fat when we are in a caloric deficit (remember – EATING LESS is still ESSENTIAL for fat loss).
Imagine where we would be today if back in the 30’s people had the foresight to build on the findings of Best and Campbell and start recommending flexible intermittent fasting and weight training as a way to prevent body fat gain…
Instead of the never-ending search for the sexiest scientific answer to weight loss, we simply focused on helping people apply what we know works…I wonder..would we even have an obesity epidemic today?
The moral of the story is stick with what works.
These days it seems like everybody is ignoring what we already know about weight loss and instead is pushing their own super complicated explanation on how you should eat.
Find a way to eat less that you find enjoyable and that you can do long term, and stick with it.
BP
